Campaign

The Ministry of Health with support from the USAID-funded Communication for Healthy Communities project is implementing an integrated health communication platform called OBULAMU? which, in English translates to How’s Life? OBULAMU? is popular way of greeting in most parts of Uganda. It elicits responses that go beyond “good” or “bad” to enable the responder to give details about life context, feelings and emotions. In adopting the OBULAMU? phrase, the campaign design makes health an integral part of people’s daily lives, making it easy to talk about health issues relevant to the audience’s context. Additionally, the campaign seeks to position health in a fresh way that addresses barriers to behavior change, head-on with questions instead of messages, coupled with skills building to engage in dialogue, and turning such dialogue into action.

OBULAMU contributes to the reduction in HIV infections, total fertility, maternal and child mortality, malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis.

Campaign audiences

The campaign is premised on the Life Cycle/Life Stage approach that employs integrated strategies of inter-personal communication (IPC), community mobilization, mass media, social media, print and outdoor media. These interventions trigger dialogue and self-reflection, provide knowledge, motivation and skills on HIV prevention, HIV care and treatment, Maternal Child Health (MCH), Family Planning (FP), Nutrition, Malaria and TB. They also aim at shifting gender and social norms and providing conducive environments for the adoption of recommended heath actions/behaviours.

OBULAMU? campaign resources are made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of Agreement No. AID-617-A-13-00003. The contents are the responsibility of Communication for Healthy Communities (CHC) Project, managed by FHI 360 and Uganda Health Marketing Group (UHMG), and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.